Minority enrollment increases at UGA

Posted: Wednesday, August 03, 2005

ATHENS - University of Georgia officials say this year's freshman class may be the most racially diverse in school history, one year after UGA hit a low point in attracting black students to its Athens campus.

Only about 80 percent of this year's freshman class of an expected 4,600 are white, down from 85 percent last year, UGA announced Tuesday.

The biggest change is in the number of black freshmen, expected to increase to about 350 students, up about 75 percent from last year's 202.

"This clearly brings that back into balance, we hope," said Jere Morehead, UGA's vice provost for academic affairs. "We hope this is the beginning of a new trend."

Hispanic students also will number 85 to 90 students, nearly 2 percent of the freshman, according to the university's projections. Last year, just 72 freshmen called themselves Hispanic.

Morehead pointed to recruitment as the main reason for the increase in diversity. UGA's admission policy does not take an applicant's race into consideration.

"I don't know that we could say any one particular thing made the difference. The admissions office has been concentrating on recruitment for the last several years, and it sometimes takes a period of time to develop a base of support (at the schools where UGA is recruiting)," he said.

Besides that, UGA has had a "focused effort" by the school's faculty and staff to contact students of color, urging them to apply to UGA and then urging them to enroll after they are accepted for admission, Morehead said.

Overall, UGA enrollment is expected to be about the same as last year's total of about 33,400 students.

UGA's final enrollment statistics won't be calculated until mid-October, but UGA can make projections of the number of non-white students in the class using statistics from past years, according to Tuesday's enrollment announcement.

The 2005 freshmen represent 143 of Georgia's 159 counties. Most are Georgia residents, 87 percent, but among the non-Georgians are students from 44 countries outside the United States.

The diversified freshman class also is expected to set new records for SAT scores and other academic measures, according to UGA's admissions department. Their average grade point average is 3.75, with an average SAT score of 1242, both slightly higher than last year.